Olga Tokarczuk Quotes

Twenty years ago, I said there was going to be something that would stop the Soviet Union from taking over the world. And now we see that the Soviet Union has been stopped, through its own disintegration.

The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.

The most noticeable thing about the Soviet collapse was that it followed a natural course.

When the USSR collapsed, I was 11, and unlike many people, I don't miss it.

Nobody thought the Soviet Union would collapse; it was a shock for everyone.

What did in the Soviet Union was the Soviet Union.

Building up the arms did not cause the fall of Eastern Europe.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.

Gorbachev's legacy is that he called time on communism, partially against his will, but in fact, he finished it off. Without violence. Without bloodshed. Beyond that, I am struggling to think of much else in terms of real legacy.

In Tbilisi in 1990, I recall watching zealous Georgians smash statues of Lenin and Stalin. A few days earlier, though, in Moscow I had been invited to address the Red Army, as one of the first Brits to benefit from Glasnost. The subject they chose: The Cuban Missile Crisis.

I see the collapse of the Soviet Union as a great tragedy of the XX century.

Today's Russia is not to be compared with the Soviet Union of back then.

I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence.

If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.

Anyone who doesn't regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.

Starting reforms in the Soviet Union was only possible from above, only from above. Any attempt to go from below was suppressed, suppressed in a most resolute way.

Of course, I know everything that happens in Russia. But even at the most dangerous moment or the most negative moment now, it's still 10 times better than what it was in the communist state.

Few people understand the magnitude of the catastrophe that happened late in the 1980s when the Communist Party had failed to modernize the Soviet Union.

I started like many young Russian people in the beginning of perestroika when it seemed that everything was possible.

There used to be this country called the Soviet Union; it's not there anymore. Our technology was better than theirs.

On March 11, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union, and within a few weeks the full-scale reformation he attempted to carry out both inside his country and in its cold war relations with the West, particularly the United States, began to unfold.

The Soviet Union collapsed without a lot of people thinking it should or would, whereas for Estonia, it was something we'd been praying for for 60 years.

Fall of the Berlin wall? Being there was fun. Nations that flaked off of the Soviet Union in southeastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus? Being there was not so fun.

Was the Soviet Union reformable? I would say no. They said, 'Okay, the Soviet Union isn't working.' They would say, 'No, it's great. We just need democracy, political pluralism, private property.' And then there was no Soviet Union. The European Union is the same.

I remember my time growing up. It was a little bit difficult because the Soviet Union was broken.